If there's one consistent piece of criticism that gets lobbed in Canonical's and Mark Shuttleworth's direction, it's that they do not contribute enough code - or anything else for that matter - to the Free software world. Mark Shuttleworth has apparently had enough, and has written a very, very lengthy blog post detailing how he feels about this criticism.

Canonical/ubuntu pushes more upstream than you realize, only they typically do so by going through Debian first since they derive from Debian.

You are mistaken. People from canonical have a @canonical.com address, and their patches never appear in any significant position in any data gathered by anybody. This means that their very rarely make it upstream.

Maybe the Ubuntu community does contribute, but this is not what the complaint is about; Canonical.

Point being: you may not necessarily see them inter-acting directly with a lot of projects, but that's by design. They contribute primarily to the extremely slow moving Debian distribution, which then may or may not take those contributions back to the original project.

It's not what I see, it's the statistics that people have gathered and that show Canonical way below many companies. In fact, I recall a single colleague contributing more patches to GNOME than the whole Canonical.

Honestly, it'd be nice if more distributions did that with their parent distributions - OpenSUSE, Mandriva, etc. could all contribute back to Fedora/Red Hat; and so forth. Slackware would actually end up getting a lot more help that way too - there are a lot of distros based on Slackware.

You are obviously not familiar with the Linux ecosystem. OpenSUSE, Mandriva and Fedora are all independent of each other, the all send their patches directly to upstream, that's how they collaborate.

Ubuntu can do the same thing, and they they would get the patches back through debian (since debian uses upstream). But again, this is not about Ubuntu, it's about Canonical.

"Point being: you may not necessarily see them inter-acting directly with a lot of projects, but that's by design. They contribute primarily to the extremely slow moving Debian distribution, which then may or may not take those contributions back to the original project.

It's not what I see, it's the statistics that people have gathered and that show Canonical way below many companies. In fact, I recall a single colleague contributing more patches to GNOME than the whole Canonical. "

"Honestly, it'd be nice if more distributions did that with their parent distributions - OpenSUSE, Mandriva, etc. could all contribute back to Fedora/Red Hat; and so forth. Slackware would actually end up getting a lot more help that way too - there are a lot of distros based on Slackware.

You are obviously not familiar with the Linux ecosystem. OpenSUSE, Mandriva and Fedora are all independent of each other, the all send their patches directly to upstream, that's how they collaborate. "

I am actually very familiar with the Linux ecosystem, and the various Linux communities, and yes - I am aware they are separate. What I was lamenting was that it would be nice if they did more with each other. OpenSuSE and Mandriva are both based on Red Hat Linux at some point in the past; neither have since kept in sync. Some distributions have a massive number of derived distributions (e.g. Slackware) but have little support in themselves; such a structure would help those big yet under supported distributions.

It's not a matter of not knowing how those distributions operate, but lamenting what could be if it was done a little differently. That is all.

Of course, then those distributions would get lost per what they contribute per LOC since the various statistics would end up no longer tracking them.

Ubuntu can do the same thing, and they they would get the patches back through debian (since debian uses upstream). But again, this is not about Ubuntu, it's about Canonical.

For all intents and purposes, Canonical and uBuntu are pretty ubiquitous. It's like saying that a discussion about Fedora or RHEL is not a discussion about Red Hat when they are pretty much one-in-the-same.

"[q]Point being: you may not necessarily see them inter-acting directly with a lot of projects, but that's by design. They contribute primarily to the extremely slow moving Debian distribution, which then may or may not take those contributions back to the original project.

It's not what I see, it's the statistics that people have gathered and that show Canonical way below many companies. In fact, I recall a single colleague contributing more patches to GNOME than the whole Canonical. "

A patch from john@canonical.com lands in Ubuntu, then would be pushed to debian, then it would be applied upstream, and then it would show in the statistics for Canonical; debian doesn't change author of the patch. That's how modern DVCS works.

If you don't see patches from Canonical in upstream, it's because there are no patches from Canonical in upstream.

"[q]Honestly, it'd be nice if more distributions did that with their parent distributions - OpenSUSE, Mandriva, etc. could all contribute back to Fedora/Red Hat; and so forth. Slackware would actually end up getting a lot more help that way too - there are a lot of distros based on Slackware.

You are obviously not familiar with the Linux ecosystem. OpenSUSE, Mandriva and Fedora are all independent of each other, the all send their patches directly to upstream, that's how they collaborate. "

I am actually very familiar with the Linux ecosystem, and the various Linux communities, and yes - I am aware they are separate. What I was lamenting was that it would be nice if they did more with each other. OpenSuSE and Mandriva are both based on Red Hat Linux at some point in the past; neither have since kept in sync. [/q]

That's not true; they have always been independent, check your sources.

And still, you don't understand how things work; the do collaborate, as I said, through upstream. In fact, distributions don't have to be related at all to collaborate, like Archlinux collaborating with Fedora in building PackageKit.

Some distributions have a massive number of derived distributions (e.g. Slackware) but have little support in themselves; such a structure would help those big yet under supported distributions.

It's not a matter of not knowing how those distributions operate, but lamenting what could be if it was done a little differently. That is all.

The only improvement that everyone agrees should be done, is that distribution should push more patches to upstream.

Of course, then those distributions would get lost per what they contribute per LOC since the various statistics would end up no longer tracking them.

Not if people use their @ubuntu.org, or @fedora.org addresses, in case they did it for a distribution, but most of the patches for distributions come from random people, like @gmail.com.

However, @canonical.com wouldn't get lost by any means.

"Ubuntu can do the same thing, and they they would get the patches back through debian (since debian uses upstream). But again, this is not about Ubuntu, it's about Canonical.

For all intents and purposes, Canonical and uBuntu are pretty ubiquitous. It's like saying that a discussion about Fedora or RHEL is not a discussion about Red Hat when they are pretty much one-in-the-same. "

They are most definitely not. RedHat contributors are a subset of Fedora contributors.

Surely a consideration should also be how many developers Canonical, through the medium of Ubuntu, have brought into the F/OSS community. Even withstanding that Canonical as a company do not contribute to the community in an amount considered significant by some, they have contributed in terms of testers and developers.

Obviously my assumption is that people who migrate directly to Ubuntu (the distribution governed by Canonical) and then become developers, develop for the community and not just for Ubuntu as a distribution.

Many of the arguments against Canonical's involvement ignore the secondary effects of starting what is, arguably, the most popular and visible GNU/Linux distribution.